Welcome to our September issue! Unlike the past three months, operating margin performance in August was slightly softer relative to last year. 2018 started as a challenge for a majority of hospitals but May, June and July saw overall better and improving performance. Inside this issue we explore the factors affecting the slower improvements in August and start to look at the potential headwinds gathering.

In this month’s Spotlight we look at the proposed changes to reimbursement for Hospital Outpatient Departments which may dramatically reduce revenue for certain healthcare systems and create further pressures on your organization. In the next several months, we plan on investigating using actual data the impact of other areas of major interest such as 340B and the proposed revision to Evaluation and Management visit codes. If you would like a certain topic explored in future issues, click the ‘Talk to Us’ link at the end of the report.

This month we are offering an “early bird” subscription on both an individual and enterprise basis. In addition to the digital report, Organization and Group subscriptions also receive exclusively:

Thank you for the continued feedback and interest. We are pleased to have a growing group of readers including leaders from health systems, hospitals, capital markets, consultants and rating agencies. One CEO shared that the information provided really fills a hole in their goal of improving by allowing for the first time to show operating performance on a relative basis each month just like they do for investment performance. He further shared that this has resulted in some healthy dialogue between hospital and system leadership. We are interested in how each of you are using our digital publication and how we can improve it to better meet your needs.
Thank you for reading,
Jim Blake